Category: Uncategorized

Way to go, 17 computer science professors!

Nice to see The Incredibles and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind get recognised. And The Aviator was also deserving. The rest – meh.

A long time ago (in university) I read this lock picking guide. I recently re-read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman which contains (among other things) memoirs of how Richard Feynman cracked safes at Los Alamos during WWII. (The safes in question weren't very secure.) And now I read Safecracking for the Computer Scientist by Matt… Continue reading Physical security

It's a great email client, but why don't the junk mail controls also work on news? They're all still there in the interface, just greyed out. I want to be able to treat junk usenet posts the same way as junk email!

Bruce Schneier reports that SHA-1 has been “broken” by a Chinese research team. I'm assuming this is a birthday attack resulting in collisions rather than a general purpose ability to find a collision for a given hash (which would be much more serious). Nevertheless, it is a major result against SHA-1 and even more so… Continue reading SHA-1 now IHA-1

It is an interesting thought that (I conjecture) a very high percentage of the edible items available for purchase in a supermarket were, at some stage in their lifetime, helped along by a bee (most likely pollinating a plant). Thus the humble bee* is clearly very important to man. *The bumblebee is alternatively known as… Continue reading Bees

The existence of the iPod shuffle merely serves to draw my attention to the fact that my iPod (3rd gen, the one with the dock) cannot do shuffle play. Apple wants people to pay $99 for the privilege of being able to do something that's been de rigeur since the 80s? Time for me to… Continue reading iPod Shuffle

Had a couple of friends staying on Saturday, so we went to Universal Studios. It's pretty good – an actual Theme Park rather than a collection of rides. In fact the rides are fairly tame as these things go, but that's not bad. The view over the valley is amazing, and they have a huge… Continue reading Universal Studios

Adverts this year = teh l4m3. That one with the cat just raised a chuckle. The highlight was the beatmania tune (“Jaques Your Body”) they used in that one advert for the… well I can't remember what it was for. Something like an iPod shuffle, but not – it featured all those body-popping people.

I just took delivery of my new fleece. It rocks. I gave one to my dad for Xmas and he loves it, so it was only a matter of time before I crumbled. I took advantage of the 40% discount afforded by the recent sale they had.